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First of all, it has been an interesting journey during my SAM career to get to write this post…because I have spent so much time helping companies and organizations “clean up the house” and get compliant, manage their applications and protecting them in the way of being always ready for software audits. But like the best things in life the journey does not have an end and is the ride that makes it great.

In the SAM World the ultimate efficiency is to manage applications from the deployment of images to usage control with compliance in between. It is precisely on this SAM ultimate efficiency that allow us to be more proactive in order to not only be ready for software audits but also to advance the reporting to a vendor before reaches to audit… I know, I know, sounds sacrilegious.

Let us put together this scenario: one organization uses a SAM governance management for all applications, policies and procedures are well-defined, smooth and there is compliance control. To “cleaning up the house” is easy and give it a year to achieve the optimal position. It is now a matter of maintaining, adapting and advising. It is then that risks are fully controlled towards software audits. And the services are rendered by a certified and recognized independent SAM consulting firm, not by a reseller. Imagine then that the organization reports voluntarily their compliance that includes deployment information.

Benefits:

Vendor does not have to list the organization on the black list

The organization tracks reports delivered to provide “good faith” to auditors and avoid their time-consuming engagements

Vendors provide funding for voluntary reporting, services by the SAM consultant may be partially covered if not paid in full.

SAM consultants can focus on the upcoming projects, working with IT architects and other to prepare for changes and ensure healthy delivery and compliance as per the established road map.

What we need is an alignment between the vendors, the SAM consultants and the customers. It has to be driven by the Vendors primarily, creating clear programs of audit protection by voluntarily reporting, enabling independent SAM consultants to provide a level of trust and optimal reporting acceptance. And this is out of the scope of the True Ups and Renewal typical reporting,,, Cloud subscriptions actually fit well on this model as usage can be controlled by the access to the applications from the vendor, but more than ever, the reality of Hybrid Cloud could benefit this approach tremendously, increasing the trust between all parties involved.

The change on democracy through the power of software and Social Media is real, and I personally think we are just starting to see how we as citizens will demand to be connected and participate on legislation directly and on real-time instead of just giving a vote every 4 years.

Let us imagine for a moment how could this work:

A Wiki government, where people can add text to propose legislation that representatives can take to vote in parliament or senate and vote along the people. A Wiki site is a powerful way to collaborate and contribute to the overall result of propose laws and can give voice to each citizen about subjects that matter, enhancing the reach of the work of our elected officials to read and listen the voice of the people.

Continue voting – online voting, having a balanced representation of collective vote and percentage of representation per parliament seat is a balance that can be adopted, and controlled through technology. A member of parliament could have more relevance to her/his constituents by allowing them to share their voice, the more participation there is on a bill, the more relevant the people become, for lesser participated votes the parliament seat becomes more relevant. This could allow significant matters to be taken more personally by each citizen and having more meaningful power in the democratic process, in other words, if a great percentage of the people vote directly on a bill the people become the decision power… technology can allow this.

Social Media will play a significant role, to start debate, to share ideas, to connect with similar individuals for common goals. Public opinion will be driven by the public and not by lobby and media giants. Politicians can use Social Media to resource opinion and propose views. We can as well influence politicians we select to represent us according to democratic ways.

New generations are going to demand the connectivity we are creating these days with the Cloud and Social Media along with powerful software to be also applied to politics, that will affect us and govern our societies.

It is an exciting moment to create the necessary changes that will allow us as citizens to be more involved. This new era of participation seems to be born on the Spanish 15M or Occupy Wall Street. Social Media was key for these movements and what transpired is an example of things to come.

The revolution that each generation demands is going to take shape in the technology we use, like in the past the despotism conflicted with the “light” that the printed word provided or the social class conflicts from the industrial revolution.

The concepts of: “direct democracy”, “wiki government”, “online vote” are extending and will be a topic of discussion everywhere more preeminently now.

In a couple of recent occasions I had the privilege to be invited to speak to people in the industry and though the questions addressed to me were related to business development and collaboration, is precisely in the moment I start talking about Social Media when I see the crowd looking at me like the just saw a ghost.

I simply mention how Social Media is helping me to create relations, meet people, find opportunities and close deals.

The power of networking and sharing ideas is such that I invite valuable messages to be shared with me to extend the knowledge to my network wither trough comments, or blogging about it, making a podcast, re-tweeting etc… The same I expect in return and this exercise is proven to strengthen the ties with partners and help each other on the value we want to bring to the market together. The same with customers who see me now as an extension of their business goals because of the extension they can get through shared networks.

Some people have a LinkedIn account, tweeter account, and Facebook account… they think that is all needed in this day and age. Wrong, is by sharing thoughts and making the effort to recognize value on the satisfactory levels of Social Media (recommendations, Likes) that the power of it results into real business action. Don’t just have accounts on Social Media, use them!.

Is this a generational problem? maybe, as the young ones in the audience don’t question what I say, but even people in their thirties wonder about the validity of Social Media.

Is because I am a social animal? Maybe, but if you are in sales and business development, you are supposed to be social too. Product driven sales people will not succeed in the new era of sharing information “fast & furious” as social media allows. If you carry a catalog but not business value, you are doomed.

For me, the idea around it is that we end up doing business with people we like and trust. Building that reputation offline and online increases the market extension and credibility comes from providing value from thought leadership.

It may be the new “Natural Selection” of the business people for the coming ten years. There is help, publications, blogs and professional services like Socialized

My advice: get on board now, if you see it pass, somebody else will jump on this train soon enough to take the advantage…

Collaborative platforms, the workplace of the future, Social Media at work

The more I use Social Media the more I get use to connect and interact with it.

It is shaping the way we use computers today, first thing many people open in their screen is the social media network, that will include the relevant email they use. Get a peek of what is happening on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and it may be by using HootSuite to see it all.

The more we get use to this the more we will see the value of working in a similar environment, where work is social and we share and give opinion to our team, above and below the hierarchy.

This social culture change in IT is going to shape boss/employee relations, collaborative work, career success and definitely attract millennials to the work space for those companies that embrace the new way to work. From sales to administration, HR or the warehouse, everybody online and working together, sharing and providing feedback in real time.

Yammer, SalesForce, Google Plus and others are shaping the way we understand the work space and companies developing solutions towards this are going to be the desirable developers the big names are going to be looking after.

It is time to rethink the company environment, the collaboration, the communications, from the systems that interact with ERP solutions to the Social Media lead generation marketing activities.

The power of this new way to work is the intuitive ability to enable progress through team work, feedback and compromise with the group.

Staying in the Jurassic is not an option, but there is a window for the change now, and it will be ideal to look at this solution in the licensing budget exercise to see when and which platform is the best for the organization.

I welcome this new way to work, I want it for my millennial brother and for my kids, I want it for me, to change the paradigms of the hierarchical structures to feel involved in the place I work or the organizations I collaborate and serve.

It will definitely influence software licensing acquisitions and the success will be for those vendors that enable this platforms easily on their contracts.

I thought that by today Twitter would have redundancy, High Availability, Great Backup, Failover…a world class Cloud Infrastructure. I guess Twitter needs DTM Systems help.
It is not easy, I bet, to have an Infrastructure that serves Twitter large amount of users, it will be great to know the reasons why is down today. It brings the question about their server Infrastructure. How is it architected, what kind of technology solutions are using? Did the problem come from a service provider that did not have Failover ready for twitter, is Twitter own farm not in today’s standards comparable to other competitors like Facebook, Google Plus.
From my point of view a business like tweeter, is so important these days (and becoming number one search engine, and social media tool,) that would have an amazing Infrastructure for its Cloud based web application like no other.
What can we do to help tweeter?, Sometime the advance on the Infrastructure as a Service IaaS is not adopted quickly, multiple reasons for that, however I have learned thanks to my friends and experts at DTM Systems that a scalable infrastructure is ideal for the Cloud, a setup of the servers and virtual machines that will be able to use the latest technologies to guarantee business continuity, scale up and down, control and managed. This is not only available for big companies like Twitter but today standards make it possible for ANY size business. I have seen it in action is amazing what these architects can do
Obviously I cannot speculate what has gone wrong with Tweeter, however if the issue was on how they have set up their Infrastructure I have a very serious message:
Twitter friends; let us have a chat, a serious chat about IaaS